Summary

Her name was Elsa Schiaparelli. She was known as the Queen of Fashion; a headline attraction in the international glitter-glamour show of the late twenties and thirties, feted in Rome (where she was born), Paris, New York, London, Moscow, Hollywood . . .

Her style was a social revolution through clothing--luxurious, eccentric, ironic, sexy . Her fashions, inspired, from the whimsical to the most practical--from a Venetian cape of the commedia dell''arte to the Soviet parachute. She collaborated with some of the greatest artists of the twentieth century: on jewelry designs with Jean Schlumberger; on clothes with Salvador Dal#65533; (his lobster dress for her, a lobster garnished with parsley painted on the skirt of an organdy dress, was instantly bought by Wallis Simpson for her honeymoon with the Duke of Windsor); with Jean Cocteau, Alberto Giacometti, Christian B#65533;rard, photographers Baron Adolph de Meyer, Horst, Cecil Beaton, and the young Richard Avedon.

She was the first designer to use rayon and latex, thick velvets, transparent and waterproof, and cellophane. Her perfume--Shocking!--was a bottle in the shape of a bust sculpted by L#65533;onor Fini, inspired by the body of Mae West. Her boutique at an eighteenth-century palace at 21 Place Vend#65533;me opened into a cage designed by Jean-Michel Frank. American Vogue , in 1927, presented her entire collection as Works of Art. A decade later, she was the first European to win the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award. Here is the never-before-told story of this most extraordinary fashion designer, perhaps the most extraordinary fashion designer of the twentieth century, in her day more famous than Chanel. Meryle Secrest, acclaimed biographer, who has captured the lives of many of the twentieth century''s most iconic cultural figures, among them: Frank Lloyd Wright, Bernard Berenson, and Modigliani, gives us the first full life of the grand couturier--surrealist and embattled figure--whose medium was apparel.

"Dare to be different," Schiaparelli advised women, and she lived it to the height; a rebel against convention--social as well as fashion. She designed an otter-fur bathing suit and a hat inspired by a lamb chop. ("I like to amuse myself," she said. "If I didn''t, I would die.") Chanel, her arch rival, called her, "that Italian woman who makes dresses."

Here is the story of Schiaparelli''s rise to fame (as brazen and unique as any of the artistic creations that emerged from her Paris workrooms before World War II); her emotionally starved upbringing in Rome (her mother was part Scottish, part Neapolitan; her father, a prominent medieval scholar specializing in Islamic manuscripts, dean of the faculty of Rome; her uncle, an astronomer famous for his description in 1877 of "canals" on Mars); her years overshadowed by a prettier sister; her elopement with a Swiss-born man who claimed to be a count, disciple of mysticism and the occult--who managed to get himself and his young bride deported from Britain . . . her struggle to care for her polio-stricken daughter, Gogo, as a single and financially destitute mother living in Greenwich Village.

Secrest writes of Schiaparelli''s keen instincts--an astute businesswoman, she launched herself into hats, hose, soaps, shoes, handbags, in the space of a few years. By 1930, her company was grossing millions of francs a year.

Secrest chronicles her exploits during World War II (she managed to escape from Europe to the United States) and, using FBI files, shows that during Schiaparelli''s stay in New York, her whereabouts were documented almost week by week; she was never explicitly charged, but the cloud of collaboration lingered long after her return to Paris.

As Secrest traces the unfolding of this dazzling career, she reveals the spirit that gave shape to this large and extravagant life, a woman--a force--whose artistic vision forever changed the face of fashion and redefined the boundaries of art.

Author Notes

Meryle Secrest was born and educated in Bath, England, and lives in Washington, D.C. She is the author of eleven biographies and was awarded the 2006 Presidential National Humanities Medal.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Ever-curious and wonderfully adept biographer Secrest (Modigliani, 2011) presents the first full portrait of dynamic couturier Schiaparelli. Bookish and rebellious while growing up in Rome, Schiaparelli landed in New York, wed to a con man whose stunts as a psychic investigator got them both in trouble. Left on her own to care for her ill daughter, dark-eyed and determined Schiaparelli, with her lithe physique and dragonfly mind, arrived in Paris like a mighty little tempest in 1922. An artist and by nature in sync with the surrealists she and Salvador Dali became close friends Schiaparelli created arresting trompe l'oeil knits depicting sailor's tattoos and x-rays and ingeniously used lobster, butterfly, newsprint, and circus motifs, exquisite embroidery, and wildly imaginative buttons to achieve a nonchalant chic. Secrest chronicles perfectionist Schiaparelli's business deals, A-list social network, gift for celebrity, arch wit, and ardor for new fabrics and saturated colors, especially the pink she named Shocking. Secrest also reveals the darker side of Schiaparelli's fame, from her FBI file to persistent but unsubstantiated suspicions of collaboration and espionage during the German occupation, her rivalry with Chanel, and the role fashion played in Parisian society during and after the world wars. Richly illustrated and endlessly intriguing, Secrest's biography illuminates the daredevil swagger of Schiaparelli's clothes and the oft-besieged couturier's inexhaustible tenacity and dazzling creativity.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2014 Booklist

Publisher's Weekly Review

"This book had its start when I began to wonder why nobody dressed up any more, even for evenings out,"¿ writes Secrest. Although she never answers her question, this consummate biographer (Leonard Bernstein: A Life) does take readers on a breathless, madcap ride across the early 20th century. The book follows Schiaparelli from her meteoric rise to couture queen of 1930s Paris to her fizzling postwar descent into bankruptcy. It begins with the image of the child Schiaparelli running through the Italian palazzo where she grew up, and ends, no less evocatively, by musing on what passed through the designer's mind as she sat on the terrace of her Tunisian getaway in her later years. In between, Secrest draws on the interviews and writings of Schiaparelli's friends, family, and colleagues; biographers and historians of the period; public records from ship manifests and visas to FBI documents; Schiaparelli's 1954 memoir, Shocking Life; and Secrest's own speculative imagination. The result paints an alternately exhilarating, sympathetic, slyly humorous, and poignant portrait, not only of the surrealism-influenced, innovative fashion designer who invented wraparound dresses, built-in bras, falsies, and shocking pink, but also of the creative cauldron of Paris in its golden age between the two world wars. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Review

Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973) was the queen of the fashion world in the years between World War I and World War II, at the time eclipsing even Coco Chanel. She collaborated with such artists as Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Jean Cocteau on her designs for jewelry, clothing, and accessories, many of which had surreal influences or presented trompe l'oeil effects. She threw and attended glittering parties and lived in glamorous locales around the world. She had a signature color, the so-called "shocking pink," and a talent for self-invention and telling outrageous stories about herself. Secrest (Modligliani) does a solid job of placing Schiaparelli's work in historical context and considering others' opinions of her. Unfortunately, since the designer left few letters and no diaries-her 1954 autobiography, Shocking Life, said less about the woman herself than how she wanted other people to be; her "12 Commandments for Women" include such pronouncements as "A woman who buys an expensive dress and changes it, often with disastrous result, is extravagant and foolish"-there's little insight into Schiaparelli's interior life. Copious photographs enhance the narrative. VERDICT Recommended for those interested in fashion history. [See Prepub Alert, 4/21/14.]-Stephanie Klose, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.